City Life

I don’t know, i think this is probably more a ‘do i know my neighbors well and trust them around my kids and trust them to respect my parenting decisions’ thing than a local laws thing. But I’m not sure that the issue is so much with parents getting arrested as it is ‘do my kids have lots of trustworthy adults around them whom they can ask for help if they do need something’ and I’m just not sure that’s always the case with kids in these situations. I had a lot of outdoor and unattended time as a kid, and i had some fun, but I also knew damn well it was because my parents and numerous relatives did not want to have to be around, or look after, or deal with the needs of, I and my sibling and cousins and friends. And this was quite widespread in my social circle, and it was not idyllic at all. A period of “play on your own for a bit but i’ll be in here if you need me” time would have been very different (and great!), but that’s not always what happens. It’s highly situational, and american parents really do need a lot more help and things like free childcare and paid leave and community, etc., but sometimes i think we look back and romanticize an idea of childhood that objectively kind of sucked. I think there’s a middle ground between surveilling kids and just leaving them alone for long periods of time. If there are other circumstances that make a particular community very supportive and affirming for wandering children - which would be great- it might be fine, but I don’t think kids should be unattended without support or help in most cases. Though, I have rarely seen police or schools or other authorities ever intervene in cases of abuse or neglect in my particular life. I’m sure it has a lot to do with the region and the race of the families involved, but the kinds of “freedom for families” areas that people talk about are often just havens for child abuse. Speaking as someone from a rural, religious area- more ‘freedom’ does not actually mean more safety for kids, it just means more risk and fewer resources or safe adults to talk to, if something bad does happen.